MANHEIM, Pa. — Kreider Farms, one of Pennsylvania’s largest dairy farms, will join Bion Environmental Technologies, Inc., to build a multi-million dollar livestock waste treatment system at Kreider Farms in Manheim.
The Cleantech facility will be the first of its kind in the state and is designed to dispose the dairy manure from the farm’s 2,000 dairy cows and poultry facilities in an eco-friendly manner.
Bion’s patented technology provides a solution to the pollution associated with large-scale livestock operations, largely eliminating the environmental impacts of concentrated animal waste, including excess nutrients, ammonia and greenhouse gases.
Cleantech is approved by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to generate approximately 140 nutrient credits per milk cow’s waste treated.
These credits will be sold by Bion via the department’s Nutrient Crediting Trading Web site.
The nutrient trading approach improves water quality using a market system to produce nutrient reductions at lower costs.
Voluntary program
It is a voluntary program in which credits can be generated from a non-point source discharger, such as Kreider Farms, and sold to a point source discharger, such as municipal waste treatment plants.
The trading approach is critical to the success of reducing nutrient loading into Pennsylvania’s waterways and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay, because non point sources contribute more than 50 percent of the nutrients into the bay.
Bion is the only company which has received nutrient credit approval for the installation of an on-site livestock waste treatment system.
In addition, the plant will produce renewable energy by combusting the biomass in Kreider Farms’ dairy and poultry waste and emission streams; greenhouse gas emission credits will be earned by significantly reducing methane emissions during its livestock waste treatment process and a stabilized nutrient-rich fertilizer will be generated as a by-product of the dairy and poultry waste treatment process.
